In two new films, Hope Davis, the pinup girl of independent cinema, plumbs the secret lives of both comic-book artists and dentists.

Hope Davis has never gone Hollywood on us, so the 39-year-old actress can still live largely unnoticed in the Village with her husband, actor Jon Patrick Walker, and their baby, Georgia. “The people who do say hello are artsy types with an opinion,” says Davis, the star of art-house films like Next Stop Wonderland. Those artsy types are going to have a field day with American Splendor,, out August 15, in which Davis plays Joyce Brabner, the wife of cult comic-book creator Harvey Pekar. The real-life couple were on the set almost every day. “Harvey was lurking around waiting for the free lunch,” says Davis. “And Joyce is the sort of person who will tell you, ‘You know, I had terrible diarrhea today.’ ” Davis is also in the just-opened film The Secret Lives of Dentists, a study of marital malaise in which she plays a Waspy dentist and mother of three. In one scene, she and Campbell Scott, her dentist husband, go at it atop a dresser. “The dresser was making so much noise. We did two takes and the crew was like, ‘Stop!’ ”